adi Posted September 12, 2019 Share Posted September 12, 2019 Recently, i bought a new external hard drive and now it's not working fine. Since last two days, it hangs whenever i try to store data. I tried several methods to make it healthy again but nothing worked for me. Now i finally decide to replace it and before sending it for replacement i formatted the drive to prevent confidential data outflow. Now i wanted to confirm is it safe now ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tx Redneck Posted September 12, 2019 Share Posted September 12, 2019 Hey @adi and To be as certain as one can be, you could encrypt the the drive, then format it again. That would ensure any data that may have been recoverable should be sufficiently destroyed. Tx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomU Posted September 12, 2019 Share Posted September 12, 2019 Does formatting an encrypted drive make it unrecoverable ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tx Redneck Posted September 12, 2019 Share Posted September 12, 2019 As I recall, the encryption scrambles any data and thus would require the key to decrypt it and formatting furthers the destruction since you're not intending to decrypt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomU Posted September 13, 2019 Share Posted September 13, 2019 That cool. This is something i wasn't aware off. Year back when i was in need of data erasing i downloaded a tool name as bitraser for file and wiped the entire drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tomk_ Posted September 13, 2019 Share Posted September 13, 2019 You still can as Bitraser still exists... or you can use a free tool called bleachbit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MdouglasFTech Posted November 23, 2019 Share Posted November 23, 2019 (edited) Agreed with the top posters. Using TPM and a good hardware encryption like McAfee will definetly render your storage media unreadable by anyone without the cypher. Gov-grade 0 bit wiping is icing on the cake. Of course, dunking it in bleach or Ammonia also works..... Best of luck Edited November 23, 2019 by MdouglasFTech Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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